I Hid My Eyes Behind Your Sofa

Pages

Saturday, December 03, 2016

You texted me that it was over. Not
even words, just emojii you expected me to figure out before you
blocked me. I’d kissed you goodbye at seven, you said I’d see you
at five. We’d exchanged our usual grin after. You didn’t return
any of my texts when I was on breaks, but I figured you’d forgot to
turn your phone on, didn’t think anything of it until I came home
to the apartment half-empty, the text on my phone. Your keys on the
table.

No note, no explanation. I went for a
walk, in the direction we always did. The habits of ten years don’t
die overnight. I walked faster than normal, texted you to no reply
six times. And did the only thing I could think do, the only thing
that was real: I threw my cell phone into the ocean in one overhand
throw of over five hundred dollars left on the plan. You never liked
that I could think of things like that, but you’d never had
to. There was a wall between us. I collected coupons. You barely knew
what they were. I didn’t think it was insurmountable. I never
thought anything between us was. The world is made of walls, but we
are ladders: with our words, our poetry, our art and hopes. Every
dream a rope ladder to the moon. If
we both want it to reach. If we can trust that the other will carry
us, and I would have sworn we did.

You’ll
never read this.It
isn’t for you. I don’t even know if it’s for me. I walked home,
packed things up. The boy who arrived was from a few doors down, I
think. I’m not sure. He was eleven and helped. He didn’t
ask a question, didn’t offer a single word. Just helped me pack
everything and after handed me my cell phone. I mean, everything was
on it, as if it was mine but that wasn’t possible. Maybe I hadn’t
thrown it, maybe I had.

“I made sure you’re unblocked,”
the boy said, and his eyes understood everything. The understanding
took my breath away. He hugged me and left, and I don’t know if he
was real. Some days I think he wasn’t. On really bad days I pretend
you weren’t, but I can’t do it for long. We were friends for five
years, lovers together in that apartment for ten. We meant too much
to each other to ever be friends again and that’s hard to say,
harder to understand sometimes. But being friends isn’t the same,
doesn’t have the same depth, the same richness. I couldn’t go
back, couldn’t pretend that never happened.

I’m certain beyond telling that if I
sent you a text now, you wouldn’t be able to block it. But I don’t.
I hope I’m strong enough that I never will.

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

The Black Chamber: Probably the
most well known and infamous. The Chamber has no problem with the
existence of monsters – many native to this world it reality –
and recognize them as part of the ecosystem. But even so they take
steps to limit their populations via the execution of breeding pairs.
They are very good at hunting and exterminating monsters as well as
hiding their existence be from the world at large.

CASPER (Centre for Secure
Poltergeist Elimination Research): A branch of the
Department of Education, CASPER exists to convince the public that
ghosts don’t exist. And do this by means of exorcisms on ghosts as
well as disinformation campaigns.

The Montauk Project: Time travel
experiments gone wrong. It was founded(?) in the 1940’s and source
of the Manhattan Project, though most stories about it don’t begin
until the 1980s.

At least 70% of the time it does not
exist.

The Border Patrol: There are
more attempted incursions into the universe from Outside than most
know. Not everyone is met by one with the power to meet such things.
For the rest, there is the border patrol. They are THE elite if
secret agencies and generally the only one magicians respect. Every
other agency is technically at their beck and call. If you need
anything done efficiently and violetly, they are the only number you
need to call.

Their attrition rate of members is a
thing of legend.

The Metric Board/Commission: A
little-known agency who police various magical talents in Canada and
the United States. It’s rumoured that they kill more humans than
any other agency and other agencies consider them a newcomer to the
field and a poorly-run one at that. They are rare in operating
jointly in two countries at once.

Sister Eye: A
satellite system and providers of data to whomever requires it. They
have access to alien tech, satellites only they know about and can
actually detect some fae glamours, which is pretty much their claim
to fame. A very minor player, but a useful one.

Homeworld Security: An umbrella
UN group with global leverage, they oversee all other secret agencies
and, as the name implies, are charged with keeping Earth secure. This
is largely done by allocating resources to other agencies as needed.

MK Ultra: One of several names
(Illuminati etc.) given to an organization that tried to hide weird
shit from humanity via telepathic tricks, etc. The rise of the
internet pretty much put an end to it and the organization was mostly
folded into other ones.

Other Groups

The Deep School: A school that
exists to teach creatures from Outside the universe about it and how
to fit in/disguise themselves. Who founded it and what its overall
motives for are unknown but they do supply ‘experts’ to agencies
if needed and do aid in destroying Outsiders who break their rules.

The Bank:
Created by the global banking industry, The Bank pays magicians
handsomely each month so that magicians never feel the need to enter
banks, use their magical powers and rob them blind. How many
organizations pay into The Bank is unknown but they do have strange
soulless ‘agents’ who can deal with magicians if one tries to
cross them.

Tuesday, November 15, 2016

“Jay.” Charlie
stares at the wall of the bathroom, then at me. “Hissing at a wall
is –” she pauses “– probably not an adventure. What are you
doing?”

“I was told that
walls in bathrooms open and lead to pits with fridges that freeze
people!”

“Fridges?”
Honcho asks.

“Because
sometimes if you hiss at walls it opens a chamber of secrets that
leads to a monster that freezes people,” I explainify.

“The only chamber
of secrets I believe this bathroom contains is the toilet,” Honcho
says.

“I have this,”
Charlie says and Honcho leaves.

“But I was told
to have a friend or two –.”

“And I am one.
Look, Jay: it’s from a fictional book. Some kids get into a trap
and run into a basilisk.”

I scratch my head.
“But those aren’t fictional, Charlie!”

“I know basilisks
exist Jay, but –.”

“No, no. I did
research like a jayboss does cuz I remembered the story and it’s at
Hogwarts which isn’t real but! then it got all confusling.”

“What got
confusing?” Charlie asks carefully.

“I don’t think
Harry expected to be met by a Jay and he tried to use magic on me
that was really meany!”

“Ah. One moment.”
Charlie walks back out really fast as if I did an oops only I haven’t
and Honcho comes back in.

“I do know what
Harry Potter is,” Honcho is saying. “I saw one of the movies once
when comforting a kid whose babysitter turned into something Else. I
dealt with the Else, but didn’t want to leave the child alone. It
could be a fae creation done just to screw with humans.”

“I’d notice
that,” I say all firmly. “And it wasn’t but it maybe wasn’t
real? Also, Harry was only wearing green clothes you know!”

“Oh,” Honcho
says, and it’s a magicians ‘Oh’ that’s all about knowing
stuff!

Charlie slumps
against the wall. “Do I even want to know,” she grumbles when the
wall opens up and she falls way down into the dark.

Honcho looks at me.
“Did you make that trapdoor, Jay?”

“I’m not
stupid,” I say all indignant like a Jay. “Charlie would be really
cross if I let her fall down a trap!”

His lips twitch. “A
good point. Follow me,” and he slips down the side without making
any wards at all which is really weirdy but I follow because we’re
going to have an adventure!

Charlie

I
hit the ground, rolling as I do. Nothing broken, a few things
bruised. I’m almost certain Jay didn’t make a trapdoor, but I am
certain he and the wandering magician will find me. The air is cold
like I’m inside a fridge and it’s dark, but the god inside me is
a thing of closets and dark spaces so I can see just fine. That
the cold is reaching us at all is a surprise. I hear dripping water,
and then the sounds of a clock.

I
walk toward it, gently
flexing my power. There are no gods here to be eaten, but there is
something.
Not a god, but a made thing. I don’t press it yet. The large room
leads to a narrow cavern and a creature. It is long, grey-green and
the clock down stops as it turns toward me. Time begins to slow,
crawling, the source of the freezing evident now. I draw on the god
inside me, reach out and eat the energy and keep walking.

“A basilisk has a lot of legs. You have none,” I say. I’m not
Jay or the magician: I can’t just strike up conversations with most
anything, but this entity is close enough to a god to understand me.
Which I didn’t know I could do until now.

“I
am repurposed. Remade,” it says, voice a roll of an aristocratic
English accent. “Floreat
Etona, you understand.”

“Not even remotely. I know of one story with a gator and a clock in
it.”

“And an eaten pirate. We are one. It is very bad form,” the
creature says.

I blink. Green. Oh. I almost ask a question I’m not sure I should
when I hear Jay behind me.

“Hi!” He bounds over. “We’re friends, right?” he says,
offering a huge grin to the creature.

“No.” It tries to use its power on Jay. I’m not sure he even
notices. Jay is from far Outside the universe for all that he is 11
and the creature has no hope of binding him at all. That it resisted
Jay trying to be its friend is scarier than anything else so far.

“A
creature that can’t know friendship can resist jaysome,” the
wandering magician says as he wanders up behind me.

The gator-thing growls.

“Hush.”
The magician doesn’t thread power into his voice, just looks at it.
“I am not part of your story, not this one nor
the others. Sleep,”
he says, and with a shudder the creature falls asleep.

“I know. The sleeping should hold. We’re under a hill, and there
is often a king who sleeps under a hill,” he says.

“This is a king?” I say.

“Sometimes.”

“What
is going on here?”

He blinks. “What do you think happens if a child becomes a
magician?”

“I have no idea.”

“They burn the magic out. It’s too much – the knowing, the
weight. the awareness. It gets thrown out of the world, or at least
into the cracks between real things. Sometimes it manifests itself as
stories.”

Magician

“But that can’t last,” Charlie says when she finds her voice.
“Magic isn’t a thing that lasts.”

“I know.” I whisper a request to Jay down the bindings between us
and Jay grins and vanishes a moment later. “Which is why it gets
dangerous. You can come out now,” I say. This is a place of magic:
anything I worked here would turn out badly, if I was lucky.

“No magicians come here. Never. None,” the voice says and a boy
flies down from the shadows above us. He is young, if you don’t
look at his eyes, and dressed in green and carrying a piece of wood
like a talisman.

“Some have,” I say, listening to the magic around me. “Children.
Lost boys and frightened girls, scared of the magic inside them. Each
one seeking Neverland, knowing magic means it must be real. And they
come here and you drain them all because that is their deepest wish.”

“I do no wrong. None,” he says as he lands on the ground.

“I’ve
never gone looking for you because I was told you’d been destroyed.
But you weren’t. You tried to move on, to become Harry but you’ve
spent too long being Peter. You
can’t escape, no matter how hard you try. Tick-tock.”

The boy lets out a scream and waves his wand toward Charlie and me.

I pull a wand out of thin air. It has colours I don’t know and
vibrates with a friendly humming.

“Oh, dear gods,” Charlie says.

I smile. “Obviate.”

The creature ceases to exist a moment later.

“Obviate?” Charlie says as I shake the wand and it turns back
into Jay.

“I
thought using Latin might give it power enough
to remain.”

“Being a wand was a lot of fun,” Jay says happily.

I
set that worry aside to deal with later. The magic – the hunger –
of this place begins to fold it on itself without the parasite to
pretend something symbiotic that
was holding
it together.

I listen to the magic. Not hurrying, even though a children’s story
that turns on itself leaves no way out. There is always a way out, a
way stories won’t take if they can avoid it. Words come, and I
raise my voice and speak: “I call upon the winds to scream, the sky
to crack, the earth to quake. I summon powers from beyond and give
myself up for my friends' sake.”

The death of the place shudders at those worse, pauses, and I use the
pause to force a door back into the real world, yanking Charlie and
Jay after me before Jay can try and stay and make himself another
friend this morning.

“What – what was that?” Charlie demands.

“Watership
Down, or at least that’s what the words told me. Death
is a stranger to the really young stories. It gave us a way out.”

“So it’s gone?” she asks.

“For now. I’ll need to tell other magicians about it. We’ll
need to find a way to stop it from forming again.”

“Obviate.” Charlie shakes her head. “Sometimes you are so lucky
that you scare me, magician.”

I nod and look at Jay. “No more bathroom adventures for a while. Or
train ones.”

Sunday, October 30, 2016

Sometimes sadness
is such a big ripple that it feels like the entire pond is full of
it. I follow it, because adventures are very important and hugging
away sadness is an important importance of course!

The ghost is in a
real pond, visible to a Jay because I am really good at seeing
things, and she is crying. People look about, hearing it without
hearing it, and the ghost is a bit older than me – and eleven is
old for a Jay – and doing bindings to try and keep people away from
the water but each one falls apart.

“Hi?” I say

“Please. No. The
water is cold: do not come in,” she says, low and desperate.

“I’m really
good at swimming and sometimes don’t even need to swim at all,” I
kinda boast a little, and do a sneaky binding to hide from people and
walk over across the water to the ghost. Because people sometimes get
weirdy when I do that, even if the water is fine with it.

The ghost stares.
She has seaweed hair, and cold skin, and looks sad more than like the
monster she’s trying to be. “The ocean is always hungry. I
drowned here, so I am part of that hunger. A calling. A haunting of
this place. I don’t want anyone else to drown.” she whispers.

Friday, October 28, 2016

The assignment was simple. There is a
wandering magician. He interferes in matters that do not concern
magicians. Find him. Kill him.

Working for the Metric Commission meant
dealing with problems. I had killed several with magical Talents in
my time. And one magician, though she was new to her power and I’d
barely escaped with my life even so. This assignment wasn’t like
that.

They gave me the aendar, a stone that
nullified power. And promises I’d be able to leave if I did this
one thing. I said yes. Sometimes that’s all you can do. There were
ways to find him, of course but I wasn’t about to try them:
magicians have good instincts for traps.

Instead I ended up in the town of
Cresthaven. Because it carried a scar in the skin of the world that
was opening and the magician would end up here. It was the sort of
thing magicians fixed and there were none around here. There were
four talents in two surrounding towns: killing them proved
surprisingly simple.

That was probably a warning. Only I
didn’t think so at the time.

The magician arrived three weeks later.
Places feel different once a magician comes to them. Like the calm at
the centre of a storm. As if everything was more real, more
important. There was a fulcrum here, and everyone knew it without
understanding what they knew.

He looked ordinary. That surprised me.
He wandered the streets and if I hadn’t been told what was wrong
with the town, I’d have never noticed him. But he paid attention to
the wound. I followed, waiting until he was done mending it.

He turned to me as I came up behind
him. The aendar was cold in my hand and warm as well as though the
stone were somehow liquid and solid as once.

“Ah,” he said, and then words in a
language I didn’t know. The aendar was in his hand a moment later.
The stone purred.

I didn’t move.

“You brought two snipers with you.”
He didn’t use power, not in the way magicians can. But he was
certain in a way that shook me.

“Three,” I admitted.

“Including you, yes.” He sighed.
“If I asked, would you tell me who you worked for?”

“I am trained to resist such things.”

“Mmm. You think that will matter to
me, considering you planned to kill me?”

“No. The stone was going to my my
method.”

The magician blinked once, studied the
stone. “Few can carry an aendar for three weeks without it leaving
them. Whatever agency you work with, you know how dangerous a
magician can be.”

“In a place of power, yes.”

He smiled, and the smile set me back a
step. “I am the wandering magician. Each place I wander to is a
place of power for me.”

I fell back another step at the truth
behind those words. I swore. I don’t often, but sometimes it’s
the only way to voice fear.

“Even if that were not true, you must
have known this would not work. Why did you do it?”

I think he threaded power into his
voice on a level so subtle I never sensed it; I’d like to think
that’s why I answered. “I wish to retire. Almost no one has. I am
tired of – the things that have to be done to keep the world safe.
Of how much I’ve lost and given up of myself, my own dreams. I
wished to be free from those I worked for.”

He laughed. The magician’s laugh
shook me with the kindness that lurked under him. “You have an
aendar stone: they unmake bindings, and some magics as well. Whatever
connected to you to your employers is gone, Aram.”

“And those who came with me?” I
asked.

“I have dealt with them.”

I didn’t ask. If I have learned
anything, it’s that some things are best left unknown. “And what
happens to me?”

“That is up to you. I will let the
stone go: no one is meant to hold one, and certainly not for three
weeks. You may forget some things you knew, but some of that will be
the stones doing on the behest of your former employers I imagine.”

I nodded. I could have asked for his
help, but there are some things you don’t do.

“And Aram?”

I paused, half-turned away. I’d never
told him my name, but he was the wandering magician.

“If you try and kill anyone else with
a Talent in your life, you will answer to me.”

I said nothing; I continued turning and
walked away. Sometimes there are no other options. Survival has a
cost, and I accepted the cost of my own.

Sunday, October 02, 2016

Every prayer I ever had was beaten out
of by my father’s hands, my mother’s indifference. I’ve been
told that we have to save ourselves, when I bring it up, but it
doesn’t work like that. We save each other: and not a single prayer
to any god makes one bit of difference in that. No god is ever going
to save you: they’re too busy passing around the popcorn and
gloating in our tears. Want to know why there is suffering in the
world? I figure it’s because it’s what give them their power.

Otherwise, if any god was real, they’d
do things now, not just in
dusty books that mean less than nothing. Sorry. I’m just trying to
explain, so that it makes sense. There have been worse parents than
mine. Ones who were never home, or ones kids prayed – having
nothing else to hope for – that they’d never be home. I’ll just
say my day was a mean son of a bitch even before he got a beer in him
and mom was on so many drugs to deal with everything that she did
nothing at all. She was about as empty as you could get and still
walk around calling yourself human. I bet the pharmacist got a crap
ton of pens for all the drugs he put her on.

I was
on a few, because of school. ‘Problem child’ as if that didn’t
mean problem parents. Mom took some of mine, or dad did to sell them.
I never found out who, but I was shaking, strung out. Uncle Tony had
killed himself. He wasn’t a good uncle, I think, but he wasn’t
bad either. In my books then that made him almost a saint. He didn’t
drink, but the doctors said there was something in his brain.
Parasite that made him just walk out into traffic one day and not
stop, something like that out of a bad horror film.

And I
was seeing things. People talk about spirit animals, but it’s more
spirit forms. What’s important
to people, what resonates with them. For dad it was beer, for mom the
pills. I had a cockroach. I knew that because cockroaches are afraid
of people and I never saw it. Never saw anything that could help me.
Sometimes, when I saw them, the spirit animals warned me just before
dad would swing a fist. I learned to read them as well as him. Wasn’t
even sure they were real.

Honestly,
I’m still not. No one had a wolf I ever saw, or a crow. TV
characters, family members: whatever
someones drug is, that was their spirit animal. Could have been me
just projecting, or whatever the term is. The
bad day wasn’t bad, not worse than any other. Maybe that’s what
it was. Words I didn’t escape, a bruise to hide at school.
Sometimes all you try to do is escape when you know you can’t and
it eats at you. Like animals gnawing off their feet in traps.

I felt
like that. I didn’t pray. To this day, I’ll swear I didn’t, but
there was a kid in my room. Between one moment and the next. He was
eleven. I remember that. I think if I ever get Alzheimer’s like a
blessing, I’ll still remember him being eleven.

“Hi.
I’m Jay,” he said, and he grinned. No one ever grinned at me like
that. Not my mom when I was born, not any lover I’ve ever had. No
one has, before or since. It hurt like nothing else too.

I
might have screamed, because he had one hand on my mouth, worried.
For me. He was worried for him, not of anything else. I knew that
too.

“I
didn’t mean to surprise you,” he said. “But you were sad-face
and I thought I could maybe help?”

“My
spirit animal is a cockroach and it hurts.” Of everything I could
have said, could have asked, could have wondered, somehow that fell
out of my mouth. These days, even on bad days like nothing I imagined
as a kid, I’ll remember that moment and have to laugh.

The
boy took it in stride as if it made all the sense in the world.
“That’s not very jaysome,” he said, and – I can’t tell you
what that means. I mean, it’s a word, but it meant – it helped,
is all I’m saying. Somehow the word helped.

He
offered to be my totem, entirely serious, and boasted he would
probably be the best spirit animal ever. I said yes, trying to cover
for my stupid statement, still thinking it so stupid but dad heard
things, came in.

Demanded
to know what another kid was doing in my room, said he wasn’t going
to be having – well, no need to repeat. I try to forget it. The kid
turned, stared up my father. And dad fell back. Fell away, looking
scared. Whatever jaysome was to me, it had other edges I never got to
see.

He
left. Dad left. I’d like to say he never hit me again, or that he
changed, but I’d be lying. The kid looked back at me and let out a
huge sigh. “I’d like to do a helping, but then you’d be changed
and you wouldn’t be you
and that would be really wrong.”

And he
meant it, as he meant everything else I said. So I’ve tried to be
me ever since that day, even if it hurts. I haven’t seen the kid
again. I left home as soon as I could, two years later. I don’t
talk to my parents anymore, though sometimes I don’t think I ever
did. I don’t pray. Never do. But now, some days, I think I
understand a little better the people who do.

Huh? No, I haven’t seen any kind
of spirit animal in years. I figure it was just the withdrawal and
some of the drugs making me loopy, that’s all. It happens. I got
better. I think the kid maybe helped with that too, but I’ll never
know. It’s probably better that way. Definitely safer. Because
whatever Jay was, safe wasn’t part of it at all.

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Today started out bad. Most days do.
The pain crept from waking aches like fingertips brushing skin to
screaming orgies of hot pokers in my bones before eight. I acted as I
had to, and the target this time was young. It almost never is, but
he had this smile like the world contained no pain at all and I
lashed out without thinking en route to work. The world has many
tricks in it, most of them sour and ugly: mine is like that. I’ve a
friend who believes in magic, but I don’t think magic can fix
anything. Not properly. It’s never there when you need it for real
pain, for cancer, for what happens when a heart sours and rots or
when age creeps into your body like an unwanted guest that will not
go.

On the really bad days, I think Death
is a rapist that takes us a little at a time for daring to grow old,
for all the medicines and marvels of our technology are an affront
and Death gets revenge in the slow decay of entropy. The body? The
Mind? Both? Death does not care how it happens, only that his revenge
is wreaked on the world. Today I ached with too many pains.

And so there was the boy. I have no
idea how he got in front of me. I don’t move fast, because of pain
and age, but I could have sworn I never saw him on the sidewalk. He
was just there like a mirage. His face was full of baffled hurt and
he was eleven – I didn’t even question how I knew that, not even
why – as he stared up into my face.

“Excuse me? You threw your pain into
me without even asking,” he snapped, as if asking made all the
difference in the world. As if someone would accept arthritic agony
if you asked them to. He didn’t look hurt, but I figured it was
because he was young. Or I’d missed and thrown the pain into
someone else. Not that I cared. I used to think the worst part about
pain was that it took away the capacity to care, but that’s the
kind of stupid thought poets have.

I stepped back, even so. There was
something solid about the boy. As if he was somehow more real
than
I was, which made no sense at all. I
turned, and a woman was standing behind me. I hadn’t heard her, and
the boy greeted her as, “Charlie,” with a grin you could hear in
his voice. Her eyes reminded me of childhood nights I’d rather
never know again.

“You’re dealing with anyone over
this, you deal with Jay,” she said softly. “He’ll be far nicer
than I,” and she sipped coffee, the action so ordinary that on
other days it would have made all this seem normal.

I turned back slowly to the boy. I
could have shouted, Screamed. Got help and forced them away. Maybe.
But there was something determined in the boy’s gaze, some hurt
that demanded an answer. “It is what I do. I have rent. Bills. I
cannot be unable to function, so I have learned to throw my pain onto
others,” I said, and it sounded utterly silly even as it remained
true.

“Ooooh. I didn’t know a pain
kinetic existed at all,” and the kid sounded happy about that. “But
I also don’t think it’s a good thing and hurting strangers is all
kinds of wrong-face you know.”

“What?” I asked.

“He means not being jaysome,” the
woman named Charlie said behind me.

“I have no idea what that is.”

The boy blinked. For a second he looked
so shocked I thought he’d finally registered the pain I’d put
into him. “That’s really wrong too you know,” he said, and
there was nothing save certainty in his voice that somehow I did
know that. “Being jaysome is pretty importantable and forgetting it
and doing mean things isn’t good at all,” and then he grinned.

The
grin earlier had been at a distance. This was close, directed and I
swear to God it felt like a weapon. I almost staggered under
everything it was, and everything it told me about the boy. “But I
hurt you,” I croaked out.

“Uh-huh.
but I am tough like a Jay and even if I wasn’t you didn’t want to
hurt me,” he said with the same appalling certainty that no one
would ever really want to hurt him at all.

“This
is what I am. What I have to be. What I learned to be in order to
survive. I can’t afford to be broken by pain, so I learned how to –
move it. Push it into others.
A kinetics of pain.”

“And
you never tried to take pain out of people?” the kid asks, as
though that should have been my first – my only – concern.

“Okay.
I’ve decided to be jaysome about this,” the kid says, as though I
should have any clue what that means just
because he says it again.
“Because I’m Jay, and I think Honcho would be nice if he could so
–.” And I feel it, feel the pain leap out of me and into him.
Movement. Kinetics. Force. The kid takes it into him without looking
the least bit hurt at all and my fear is turning into other things.
“There. But for the pain to stay out of you, you have to take on
the pain of other people.”

“What?”
I manage.

“It
doesn’t have to be physical of course, but there is balance.
Payment,” he adds firmly.

I
stare at him. “And if I don’t?”

“Then
the pain comes back and all the painkinesis in the world won’t get
it out of you,” he says simply, as certain of that as he is of
everything else.

I
shudder slightly. I nod. He grins, and wraps his arms about me in a
hug and then bounces behind me to the woman and heads off down the
sidewalk, boasting about how he did a helping and her replying that
she knows because she was there as well. It only pauses him for a
moment. Whatever he is, I
don’t think much slows him down. I keep walking. After a good five
minutes my phone rings, and my daughter is sobbing about the new
horrible thing her husband has done.

I
almost point out she knew what she was getting into when she married
him, but there is a twinge of pain in a finger. I ask questions, I
listen, and the pain goes away. Both mine and hers. And it feels far
better than I want to admit.

Sunday, September 18, 2016

Being a shadow isn’t as easy as
people think, not if you hide in other shadows. Most people don’t
even know that shadows can cast shadows of their own, but there are
many things people don’t know and are often far safer for it. Part
of being a magician is that one does not get the luxury of hiding,
and another part is being aware in ways that other people never are.
Once, a psychic informed me she could See the true shape of the
cosmos if she dared. But psychics place too much on sight, and there
are so many other senses that give information as well.

The world is full of secret and strange
things. Sometimes terrible, sometimes wonderful. The instincts people
have keep them alive far more often than they know. Which, again, is
something denied to magicians. We go where people have the sense to
never tread. It’s one reason there are few magicians, among all the
others. It is why I am sitting up in bed in a cheap motel room with a
piece of wood in one hand, string hanging from it, and fishing in my
own shadow.

Because there is something in it that
doesn’t belong there. And even knowing what and who it is, it takes
almost three hours to get a yank and pull Jay out and back into the
world. He thumps onto the bed, bounces a few times. Bounces a couple
more because Jay is eleven and loves to bounce on beds. Never mind
that until he hit the bed, the springs were shot and now aren’t.
Jay is very good at bindings, and from far and far Outside the
universe.

“Honcho!” He moves in a blur,
wrapping arms about me in a huge hug.

I grin despite myself and return it,
gently pushing them away. Jay grins in turn, and the power of his
grin melts some of my annoyance away despite my every effort to
retain it. “Jay. You mind explaining what you were doing in my
shadow?”

“Oh! I was hiding from Charlie,” he
explains.

Given that Charlie is is a god-eater,
in her late teens and more importantly is Charlie, that much makes
sense. I’m better at dealing with the weird of Jay than she is;
Charlie is far better at helping him with normal human questions and
concerns. I still have no idea what a feverfewm is even after Jay
explains he grabbed some pancakes from them and left behind tea and
then got really lost but in a good way because it was an adventure.

I find a gap between words, cough. Even
Jay grinds to a halt at the meaning a magician can put into a cough.
“And why were you hiding?” I press.

“Uhm!” Jay looks away. Looks back.
“I maybe kind of tried to train Charlie,” he explains, “Because
in movies you can train dragons and people train pets all
the time,” he says, “and Charlie isn’t a pet at all but but but
I figured she would be easier to train than a dragon.”

“Training
her to do what?”

“Well,
I have pokemon on my phone and I am a good pokemon traininer so I was
going to train her to be a pokemon,” he says as if that made all
the sense in the world. “But she got out of the pokeball and said
some really rudey words Honcho, so I hid. And I hit really good,”
he adds proudly.

“You
got lost inside my shadow and couldn’t find a way out.” I point
out dryly.

“It had to be a really good hiding or
Charlie would find me,” he says. “And the god inside Charlie
could find me if I hid in Charlie’s shadow but yours is really big
and –.” Jay pauses. He doesn’t add another word, but slams into
me with another hug as tight as he can give it.

“I know what’s in my shadow, Jay,”
I say softly as he lets go.

He sniffs and just nods. There are
shadow-creatures I once trapped in my shadow and, I realize now,
forgot to let out. And given the things I have done, and the kind of
person I have had to be over the years, there is far more as well.
But none of it even dents Jay’s trust in me because he grins again
a moment later. “I managed to train some of them though, but I
stopped it because it wasn’t my shadow and it would be pretty
rude-face to do.”

I blink. I never sensed that use of
energy at all. I hope my face is as empty as I wish it is. “Ah.
Well, thank you for realizing that at least. Charlie is in the small
restaurant and I think you owe her an apology. Probably even two.”

“Oh!” Jay nods to that and gets off
the bed, slouches to the door. “Wait, can I give just one is
Charlie is mean to me?”

“No.”

He nods, and walks out the door at a
normal pace. I don’t follow. I just listen, the door open, and am
just relieved there are no screams or sounds of breaking plates a few
minutes later. I eye my own shadow thoughtfully, but I don’t dare
leave Jay on his own trying to apologize. Charlie often forgets Jay
doesn’t get sarcasm and can be so very literal at times. I find
clothing and throw it on since she hasn’t tried to kill him yet,
the door of the room closing behind me without my needing to touch
it.

Normally my magic does things like
that; this time it was my shadow acting on its own. I sigh, knowing I
have to set time aside later to deal with that
but for now I just head to the dining room and hope Jay’s apology
hasn’t broken too many laws of physics so far. Or
other ones as well.

Monday, September 12, 2016

The garden contains a vast beanstalk
that reaches up into the sky. It is every colour you have seen only
in dreams, and some you have never seen at all. There are shades of
green that jealously would wish it could turn when it is envious of
itself. The beanstalk is not what is special about the garden.
Indeed, it can only be seen sometimes if one stands in the right
angle, or looks at it at precisely the right time. It does not hide,
but you know it is not for you. It has stairs, unlike the one in
stories, and perhaps they would even be an escalator if one was to
ask.

The beanstalk is alive. It listens. It
waits. There are giants at the top of it. They are human. They are
also giants, the human magnified to some perfect ideal of friendship.
The giants are not real, not even like the beanstalk is, but anyone
seeing them would wish that they were. Even those whose images they
wear balk at these versions of themselves. It is a hard thing to be a
god; it is harder to be something far more than any god could ever
be.

But the true wonder if the garden lies
is how ordinary it is, given who found t, and how it was made. It is,
aside from a beanstalk, a very ordinary garden until one digs deep
into the roots of the stalk. There is a cornucopia of worms and
insects around the large potato that exists as the base and root of
the beanstalk. It has slightly more muted colours, because it has
been in the dark. The potato does not snore, but it wishes so hard
that it could.

Opened, there is a boy inside it. Not
every potato contains a boy inside them, as not every cabbage patch
contains a kid. The boy is eleven, and this is known as if it was
simply a universal constant. And he smiles the way another might
grin, and the smile is kin to the giants at the top of the beanstalk,
and it is made of joy and innocence and a friendship deeper than the
sea between the stars.

There is a woman. She has dug the boy
free from the earth with the same shovel she used to plant him. “I
am sorry,” she says, and there are a thousand meanings behind her
words.

The boy hears the ones that matter, and
looks baffled. “But Charlie,” he says, and he is earnest and
brave and true in the ways a jaysome boy can be, “I have a really
nify rest and some really great adventures!”

“I buried you because I needed a
break,” she says, trying to make her own truth known. It is a hard
speaking, even if she knows the boy must know what she means.

“Breaks are always good,” he says
with a huge grin. “I take breaks from adventures when I’m
sleeping and we had different adventures plus! I made lots of new
friends,” and there are worms flowing happily over his feet.

“Ah.” The woman says the word in a far different tone.
“They are not coming inside, Jay.”

“But they’re really
tickly and comfy,” the boy says with a huge sigh after. All
children feel that they are misunderstood. Jay knows that he is
understood far too well.

“I imagine so,” the woman says,
laughing. “But the owners of the house might not approve?”

“Oh! Okay, then,” the boy says, and
crouches down and says farewell in the way only children can say it
and it not mean forever. The beanstalk fades too. It does not vanish,
but it moves itself somewhere else, perhaps seeking a story all its
own, or if only in sheer embarrassment as having been grown up from a
potato when that shouldn’t be possible at all.

The woman ruffles the boy’s hair and
Jay grins at Charlie and says they will have to have even more
adventures to make up for him being in the earth because! they
probably had a famine of adventures without them, flinging the words
in happy certainty.

The woman agrees, and the boy almost
trips over his own feet as he follows her inside.

The first adventure is when she tickles
him mercilessly for over five minutes.

The next one involves tea.

And there are so many more others that
this tale cannot fit their telling.

Sunday, September 11, 2016

There were laws. Accords. Pacts and
promises, but the old Accords were nothing in small towns in the
middle of nowhere where there were none to enforce them. Places
barely on maps where no one could be missed. Source of food. Half the
town is gone, in hunger I have denied myself for centuries. Their
fear is the nectar that sweetens all things. I was feared once, long
before I fell into the smallness called a universe. In places far
Outside my name is still spoken in terms of fear and dread.

We fall so far when we do not notice we
are falling.

There is interference, of course. One
human has a Talent, enough to sense me. Not near enough to be a
threat. That one dies first, and others they know as well. One meal,
another. I eat slowly, savouring questions and terrors in equal
measure. Every message they try and send out, I intercept. Every
person who tries to leave, I devour. They learn not to leave, though
it takes them time. Humans are such small things.

The magician that comes into the town
is an unpleasant shock. I have made baffles and barriers and he
wanders in as though they did not exist at all. There is a god-eater
with him and a human boy. I decide they will feed me with energy
enough to break even a magician. Magicians are, in the end, only
human.

But the boy unmakes the hunger when I
reach for the woman. Turns and sees me, through the disguise I’ve
used for centuries. “Excuse me, but we’re drinking tea,”
he says, as though that somehow was of deep importance. “And you’re
trying to hurt us and Honcho and that’s really rude you know!”

“You have killed
almost a hundred people.” I have no idea how the magician comes up
behind me without my noticing, how he escaped my senses at all. He
carries the dead in ways magicians do not – no magician deals with
ghosts, with desires they can never answer. But this one – he
studies me, and smiles, and all at once I understand the stories that
have reached me even in the centre of my Power.

“You are the
wandering magician.”

“And friends,”
the boy adds firmly.

“I am,” he
says. “You have rooted yourself deeply into this place,” and he
says my true name, which I had almost half-forgot. “I can force you
out, but it would damage the skin of the world in this area for a
long time. I could destroy you with the dead I have gathered, but it
would be revenge and cause the same wounds in the Grey Lands. Flee
back Outside and never return.”

I would laugh, but
there is nothing in his voice save certainty.

I open a Gateway,
step far Outside and weave a way back with all the energies I have
stolen. I can slip to a different point in time, or even another
place entirely, and feast without being noticed at all. That is
within my power as Opener of the Ways.

The Gateway
crumples. The Way I am is unmade, with such power that I can no
longer be certain where I aimed it, or even where the Universe is. I
shudder a little. I have been away a long time. Reputation will only
carry me so far. I remember why I entered the universe, and what is
seeking me.

In
time, It finds me. An Unravelling, ancient and mighty. But it asks
about the boy I barely recall. His name, abilities, the truth of his
strength. I know nothing of such things, and it is almost a relief
when the Unravelling turns its power upon me and says it can send me
back. At a price. And for a cost.

Energies flow,
within and without, and I... reach, fall short of something, feel
everything I was dissolving. There are barriers I cannot breach, and
that is almost a relief even after all the Unravelling has turned me
into.

“He resists me?”
the Unravelling screams. I did not know they had speech. I never knew
they had hate. All I am is relieved to feel myself being umade and
freed of powers far beyond my ken.

A collection of miscellany

Condoms will break, but I can assure you that vows of abstinence will break more easily than condoms.

- Dr. Joycelyn Elders

In fantasy, impossible things exist. In science fiction, impossible things exist and can be understood by humans. In supernatural horror, impossible things exist and cannot live in peace with humans.

- Will Shetterly

We are living in a time when you can believe anything, as long as you do not claim it to be true.

- Ravi Zacharia

Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end.

- Richard Dawkins

In the time of harmony the golden age is not in the past, it is in the future

- Paul Signac

"No" is the wildest word in the English language.

- Emily Dickinson

The middle ground between genuinely true and outright faking is unconscious delusion.

- Dean Radin

“You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it’s hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it’s better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can’t write anybody’s book but your own.”